Love that can bear no hatred is only hatred on a finer level. Freedom that cannot dwell with limitation is but a tyrant in disguise. Only that rest which remains in the midst of movement is the “peace that passeth understanding”.

What is it that holds life in all its contradictions, yet remains whole? What is that Yes that covers the world like rolling thunder and “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust”?

Is it not the very ground we stand on? The space that holds everything beautiful, terrible, and absurd within us? That love that never recedes, that freedom immune to limitation, that peace beyond understanding—is it not you, reading these words?

May we find the source and rest,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Perfume of Silence by Francis Lucille

“[The realization of Oneness] means being constantly open to the possibility that we are like two flowers looking at each other from two different branches of the same tree, so that if we were to go deep enough inside to the trunk, we would realize that we are one. Just being open to this possibility will have a profound effect on your relationships and on your experience of the world.”

― Francis Lucille, The Perfume of Silence

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In my search for the eternal, I flee from time, place, and circumstance. I flee this cage of a self, barred in by fear and desire, regret and ambition, and all things mundane. I flee the concrete in search of the absolute, and end up stranded in between.

For such is the mystery of the absolute, that it is always only concrete. Such is the play of eternity, that it speaks only in the moment.

What separates here from everywhere, now from always, is only a way of seeing.

May we rest and see,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master

Dōgen’s writings return us to the intimacy of the present moment. What we seek as timeless, he suggests, is not hidden behind the world but shining through its suchness. His thought refuses every easy division between absolute and relative, eternity and time, awakening and ordinary life.

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Sometimes, it won’t be me who sees you, but a kid lost in the ruins of a childhood. Sometimes I won’t look at you, but through you—and you’ll be the facade of all my fears.

At times, your smile will open wounds so wide, we’ll both be swallowed. At times, my love will shrivel into want, and my want crumble into need.

There will be days that sink down a me-shaped hole. Days when we know our love only by the pain its absence brings.

On days like these, don’t pass the cup. Don’t spare your eyes. What needs healing first needs seeing. Be my eyes when I go blind, and show me to myself.

May we both be seen and seeing,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller

This is one of the books that has most impacted my self-understanding. Alice Miller explores how early emotional wounds shape the adult self, often invisibly directing our perceptions and relationships. What we take to be love may conceal unmet needs; what we see in others may reflect what we have not yet faced within ourselves…

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“In this organism I begin, and in it I end. This body-mind, with its thoughts, feelings, and organs—this is who I am.” So goes the “self” superstition I live by.

But then a bird warbles in the branches overhead, and my heart leaps to dance. This joy then is my own, part of my self, but the birdsong that called it forth is not?

Or I open a book, whose beauty consumes me, whose depth and power reshape me. When I close the book, has it not nested within me? Does it not live through my actions and speak through my words?

I am lost in the ecstasy of my lover’s embrace, the smell of her skin, and the call in her eyes. Her body is my body, and my mind is a nameless passion; who or where am I then?

This self—or body-mind—isn’t it made of birdsong, poetry, and lovemaking just as much as of thoughts, feelings, and organs? Isn’t it life itself that speaks when I say “I am”?

It is thinking that fractures life into inner and outer, into self and other. But even thought, in its violence, is nothing other than life at play, life blooming, life exploring its abundance from endless angles, sinking in ever-deepening enchantment at its own mystery. And you and I are that!

May we rest as the mystery,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Interior Castle by Teresa of Ávila

In this classic of Christian mysticism, Teresa of Ávila describes the soul as a castle whose innermost chamber reveals a profound union with the divine. The journey inward becomes a discovery that the deepest center of the self is not separate from God. A luminous account of the unity underlying all experience.

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Carl Jung dedicated his life to understanding the human psyche—and his own. Borrowing Nietzsche’s incendiary phrase, “Become yourself!”, he developed his vision of “individuation” (or uncovering one’s unique potential and stance on life) as the ultimate purpose of human existence.

But despite all his self-inquiry, self-knowledge, and self-development (or perhaps because of them), Jung shares some striking non-dual experiences in his late years. In his autobiography, written in his old age, we read:

“At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the plashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons…”

— C.G. Jung and Aniela Jaffé, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

We may wonder whether Jung is not contradicting his earlier preoccupation with “becoming oneself” here… Or whether, on the contrary, he is describing an advanced stage of self-awareness. In his personal letters, he reveals even more:

“I observe myself in the stillness of Bollingen and with all my experience of nearly eight decades must admit that I have found no rounded answer to myself. I am just as much in doubt about myself as before, the more so the more I try to say something definite. It is as though familiarity with oneself alienated one from oneself still further.”

— Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II

The Buddha, I think, would be happy to hear Jung’s ultimate conclusion about himself… That is, his lack of any conclusion whatsoever.

In Ānandasutta (SN 44.10), the Buddha is silent when asked whether the self exists; he is then asked whether the self does not exist, and he remains silent. Could there be more freedom in that silence than any conclusion could convey?

May we grow familiar with ourselves,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self by C.G. Jung

“Aion, originally published in German in 1951, is one of the major works of Jung’s later years. The central theme of the volume is the symbolic representation of the psychic totality through the concept of the Self, whose traditional historical equivalent is the figure of Christ. Jung demonstrates his thesis by an investigation of the Allegoria Christi, especially the fish symbol, but also of Gnostic and alchemical symbolism, which he treats as phenomena of cultural assimilation. The first three chapters—on the ego, the shadow, and the anima and animus—provide a valuable summation of these key concepts in Jung’s system of psychology.”

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You read these words and encounter them as novel, as unfamiliar. I read them, and I know them as my own, thought up and laid down in print by my self. We both grasp at the text: I by claiming ownership over it, and you by seeking to profit from it. We may call this spontaneous grasping egotistical, and therefore ‘unenlightened’, but that makes it no less natural. In fact, to condemn our grasping is only to grasp on a higher, more “spiritual” level: “I must not grasp, I must not be egotistical—I must be better!”

If this self-making occurs so spontaneously, we may do well to pause and consider why it arises in the first place. Why has nature seen fit to create diverse loci of consciousness, diverse sentient beings, each striving to preserve, reinforce, and express itself? Or, in our limited case study, why is there me as the writer, and you as the reader?

Nature is far too consistent, determined, and creative in its self-making to write this off as a mere error. And we ourselves are far too fruitful in the endless variety of perspectives we bring to life.

We may wonder whether nature has not overdone things by separating itself into various identities, as we are destroying the world (and ourselves) over what belongs to whom and which self is more important than the other. But maybe the suffering that springs from egoism is the wake-up call we need to develop a more holistic understanding of reality. We must only remember that the impulse to this waking up, the drive to become free from suffering, can arise only in our selves.

Our individual consciousness is the soil in which nature plants its seeds. How would the insights of the Buddha, for example, have entered the world had the Buddha not awakened to them? How would this text have been written if I had not grabbed the pen, and how would it have become known if you, my reader, “mon semblable, mon frère”, had not arrived here to read it? Perhaps our selves are all so many masks nature puts on to catch a glimmer of its ever-elusive face?

May we wake to and beyond ourselves,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Teilhard de Chardin presents a sweeping vision of evolution not merely as biological change but as the unfolding of consciousness within the cosmos. From matter to life to reflective mind, the universe becomes increasingly aware of itself through countless individual centers of experience. Human consciousness, in this view, is not an accident but a pivotal moment in the story of the world.

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Our deepest insights and our most original ideas come when we are in a state of rest. When we are not trying. They arise in us, but not from us, and should we have enough space for them, they choose us as their vessels.

Our times, possessed as they are with activity-psychosis, have forgotten the significance of rest. We wage war on rest with our arsenal of deadlines, to-do lists, vision boards, productivity systems… One may wonder whether we know rest at all, or only entertainment. We gorge ourselves on activity, hoping for some feat of alchemy to transform it into satisfaction. The idea that satisfaction should come before activity, that our work must be the expression of a life well lived (rather than the means to such a life), is alien to us, suspect… Blasphemous?

The Buddha makes a profound distinction when he lists the mind as one of the sense organs: a receiver of thoughts (rather than their maker, as we believe it is in the West). If we consider this perspective seriously, we may see how counterproductive it is to always keep the mind busy, always consuming, always entertained, always full. A full mind is a mind with no capacity to receive new understanding or to question what understanding it has. It is a mind dulled by the monotony of its patterns, conveniently susceptible to the coercion of leaders, “influencers”, and charlatans of every kind.

Rest, the cessation of activity, the surrender of pursuits—including the pursuit of rest—is essential for the cultivation of insight. Rest (to phrase it in a way more palatable to modern sensibilities) is the divine form of work. When we are at rest, we become the space in which life spontaneously reveals what our shortsighted efforts can never attain.

May we remember to rest,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper

“One of the most important philosophy titles published in the twentieth century… Leisure is an attitude of the mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a capacity to perceive the reality of the world. Pieper shows that the Greeks and medieval Europeans, understood the great value and importance of leisure. He also points out that religion can be born only in leisure—a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God…

“Pieper maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture—and ourselves.”

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The cultivation of insight into self and world—whether through philosophy, science, or meditation—tends to make obsolete certain interpretations of reality we have so far taken as self-evident, as common sense. But these interpretations we later condemn as “ignorant” (even “wrong”) are what has allowed and compelled us to seek and cultivate insight in the first place.

The womb nourishes and protects the fetus, providing it with comfort and predictability, only to then expel it into a strange, terrifying, and miraculous world that is yet needed for the further development of life. In this same way, our ignorance, immaturity, and errors seem to be no random “mistakes”, but the very soil in which the seed of insight can grow.

Ignorance is not the enemy of insight, but its womb. Ignorance is the past tense of insight, and we are ignorant indeed when we take our current understanding to be final and complete. Nature is continually expelling us into the strange, terrifying, and miraculous as we stumble towards understanding, climbing a ladder of errors towards… Truth? Could positing truth be the final womb keeping us from birth beyond ignorance and insight?

May we never cease being born,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings translated by H. Lawrence Bond

Nicholas of Cusa proposes a paradox: the highest wisdom is “learned ignorance.” Before the infinite, the intellect must relinquish its claim to completion. Knowledge grows not by conquering mystery but by deepening reverence for it. A luminous Christian counterpart to the insight that every birth of understanding reveals a wider horizon of unknowing.

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My life is my revelation of the mystery of being. In a language of images, sensations, and feelings, the universe speaks to that knowing nested in this body-mind—a knowing no other than the world’s own knowing of itself. Thus, being is both speaker and listener, and my life is the speech. By speaking, it reveals as much as it conceals, for every experience is a translation of the universal in the language of the concrete.

My life is my revelation, and yet I roam through books and teachers, philosophies and poets, inhaling the exhaust of their revelations, seeking to feed on the vapors of their truths. Thus, I silence the one true teacher—call it life, being, universe, or God—who is patiently waiting for me to hear its voice, to learn its primal language.

This very body-mind is the scripture of being; my own heart and soul are the psalms of God. I am the place where the ink meets the paper, and that is often too frightening and lonely. So I flee to my books and teachers, philosophies and poets—opiates against the unbearable truth of my being here and now.

May we learn to bear the revelation,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Self-Reliance, Emerson challenges us to abandon secondhand truths and trust the living current of insight within. A bracing reminder that the soul’s voice is older than scripture, and speaking still.

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Many live within me—angels, devils, beasts, and men. A society of broken voices, chanting ancient, aching thirst. In me dwells the world I inhabit.

When I look outside, I am partial; a fragment of a boundless whole. But when I turn inside, I am the boundless: the being of which all partakes.

The is-ness of all that is arises of its own accord. A being-and-knowing that echoes as self within and world without. But itself, it is neither here nor there. No name can land upon it, though it sounds in every breath.

May our breath move in worship,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Few books speak so directly to the intuition that the boundless is not “out there” but the very fact of awareness itself. Nisargadatta relentlessly dissolves the imagined fragmentation between self and world, knower and known, until only the simple, luminous “I Am” remains.

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The Absolute does not need to be attained, realised, or even known. Summoned or not, it is. That is why we call it Absolute. It is this frightened flicker of life that is our self, and this bleeding world, that needs our tending. The Absolute will tend to itself.

If my practice is a sideways move, a stepping back, a search of a different angle of perception, then I am practicing escape. The Absolute cannot be known apart from the world and our selves. Can the ocean be known apart from the water and the waves? What is known apart is only thought, the fumes of being, but never being itself.

The ten thousand things blind us to the One until we know them as the One in action. But to know the One that is the ten thousand, we must know our self as one of the ten thousand. For the One, the Absolute, in all its terrifying glory, has seen fit to lay its head within the feeblest of things. Our self. Its call echoes in ten thousand tongues throughout the bleeding world, and it is never “go” or “leave”. It is “Enter and stay.”

May we heed the call,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The World as Lover, the World as Self by Joanna Macy

Macy gives voice to a radical non-duality that refuses transcendental escape. Drawing on Buddhism, systems theory, and ecology, she shows how awakening matures not into withdrawal, but into participation. The One knowing itself as soil, grief, responsibility, and care.

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Practice is difficult, for it is only here and now. It is easier to plan a retreat or pore over ancient texts. It is easier to study and debate technique, tradition, and meaning. It is easier to write about practice—as I do—and to read about it, as you do. Easier to seek as a pilgrim for miles, or for years of sitting in silence. But practice is difficult, for it is only here and now.

Practice abides not on the cushion, in the rosary, incense, or candle. It is not found in books or relics, and no guru has ever possessed it. It does not roam the wilderness, it dwells in no temple, and you will not find it on the street. Of words thought, written, and spoken, not one has come close to it.

The practice is not outside or inside us; we can’t reach it in any direction, but we can cease departing from it. When the search ends, it is the first thing we see. If we see that first thing as practice, we will not be far from the truth.

May we remain with the first thing,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence

Brother Lawrence offers one of the most radical articulations of practice as ordinary, immediate, and unlocatable. The Practice of the Presence of God records a life lived in continuous attention, where the here and now becomes prayer without words.

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Nothing I am ever conscious of is other than consciousness.

The taste of snow melting on the tongue, the bleeding sky at sundown, my lover’s sigh of surrender, the silent glory of my child… Life in its countless guises—human, demonic, and divine—ten thousand variations on the ten thousand things, and yet never for a moment other than consciousness.

The mind is seeking always to become not-mind, and so crafts apparitions such as self and world, seer and seen, mind and not-mind. It crafts past, present, and future, and space with its directions; it fills these with beings, objects, and events. Diving into this whirlwind of phantoms, it loses itself in its own vapors.

And all the while, consciousness abides. It accompanies all movement, yet remains unmoved. It receives all wounds unwounded and lives through every death. It embraces every height and depth without extending. Though older than the world, it is ever born anew.

The mind, frightened of its empty nature, seeks to fill itself with its creations. Or once exhausted by this work, it seeks to return to the rest it has forsaken. Thus, it spirals and tangles up the knots it then untangles. And all the while, consciousness abides.

But empty or full, manic or at rest, the mind never knows anything other than its knowing. The emptiness it flees is the fullness it is seeking. Bidden or not, found or forgotten, one or in ten thousand pieces, consciousness abides.

May we rest as that emptiness full to the brim,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy is especially powerful for seekers who feel that spirituality has been reduced to technique or self-improvement. Coomaraswamy writes with uncompromising clarity about tradition, symbolism, and the sacred foundations of art and culture. His work points beyond belief systems toward a lived participation in truth.

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The mind, my prized possession, my pride and palace… How differently it looks once it is truly seen! An onslaught of images and chatter; a golem wrought of fear and desire, of memories and dreams.

The most spiritual of practices—the watching of the mind—feels anything but spiritual when first we attempt it. Lift the lid of this boiling mentation, and the pungent smell of lust, vanity, and hatred drives away every last bit of self-contentment. The watching of the mind, yes, reveals who we are, but not until it kills who we think we are. It is loss, disillusionment, and a death… And yet it is the way, the truth, and the life.

With humility and patience, we persist in our watching, and slowly the miracle becomes known. We perceive we are abiding nowhere in the mind, and neither are we found outside it. We perceive there is no watcher apart from the watching.

Where once we used to be, now only love remains. And the frightened, hungry mind is held like a babe in its mother’s embrace.

May we persist in our watching and see,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

Seeing That Frees by Rob Burbea

Rob Burbea was a senior teacher at Gaia House and widely respected for his depth, precision, and humility. In Seeing That Frees, he guides us into the quiet dismantling of perception itself, where the watcher softens, the world thins, and love remains without a center.

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The body speaks. A mind which recognizes no other language than thought cannot but perceive the body as a mute instrument, a capricious vehicle for the intellect’s designs. Such a mind is always seeking escape from the body (and thus, from life) in its own productions. Its escapes are ideas, ambitions, beliefs, and every kind of “-ism” on whose altar we would sacrifice our wholeness.

But the body speaks. It is speaking all the time in the primeval tongue of experience. A tightness in the chest, the tingling of arousal, a headache that won’t go away, the love and silence that follow tears… Each of these is a scripture housed in the ancient library of the body. A library whose doors are always open but low, so that only a humble mind—a mind that has learned to bow—can enter.

Only in humility can the mind discover that what it calls “body” is but a different kind of mind, and what it calls “mind” is a different kind of body.

May the body-mind awaken through each of us,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

“In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.

“He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.”

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The externally existing world is the womb in which my senses develop to discern the deeper reality of the internally existing world. Hindus and Christians alike speak of the “twice-born” or “born again”, meaning those who have grown ears to hear and eyes to see the internal reality in the external appearance. Those who have been born to truth.

But like every womb, the external world is also a cage. It is an appearance all too arresting to dull or slumbering senses. A metaphor all too involved, concealing rather than revealing the truth it is meant to convey.

The external world is a reflection in the mirror of the body-mind. As long as my senses remain confused, I roam a labyrinth of surfaces without depth. I grow weary, pursuing the distant appearances of realities present only within me. I run the perimeter of my cage, frantically seeking a way out, all the while winding the shackles tighter around my neck.

Only with the awakening of my senses do I perceive that the way out of the womb-cage cannot be found, for I myself am that way. Scales such as “internal” and “external”, “metaphor” and “truth”, and “self” and “world” fall off my eyes, and I see.

May we all taste newborn freedom,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Gospel of Thomas: The Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus by Jean-Yves Leloup

“In this new translation of the Gospel of Thomas, Jean-Yves Leloup shows that the Jesus recorded by the ‘infinitely skeptical and infinitely believing’ Thomas has much in common with gnostics of non-dualistic schools. Like them, Jesus preaches the coming of a new man, the genesis of the man of knowledge. In this gospel, Jesus describes a journey from limited to unlimited consciousness. The Jesus of Thomas invites us to drink deeply from the well of knowledge that lies within, not so that we may become good Christians but so we may attain the self-knowledge that will make each of us, too, a Christ.”

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“If you think you are enlightened, go and spend a week with your family,” cautions Ram Dass. This holiday season, we all get the chance to apply ourselves in this spiritual exercise.

The “Ten Oxherding Pictures” of Zen Buddhism are one of the most comprehensive and subtle maps of awakening. We would do well to remember the final stage of the path described there, which does not consist of some mystical feat of world-transcendence, but its opposite. The culmination of the path, Zen tells us, consists of “returning to the city with gift-bestowing hands”. Indeed, the final image of the series depicts a wild old man with a bag of goodies over his shoulders—very much like a Zen Santa!

Zen Santa, having probed the depths of existence and of his own nature, does not reserve his gifts for good boys and good girls only. “He is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers,” says the poem, meaning he doesn’t choose his company. He doesn’t pass judgement. Perhaps this supreme skill of his is what allows all in his presence to be “converted into Buddhas”.

Zen Santa reminds us of Christ, who was asked, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”, to which he replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (Luke 5:30-31)

‘Tis the season of gifts, and each of us gets to be Santa for a while. As we are wrapping our presents and making plans with our loved ones, it will serve us well to remember what Ram Dass, Christ, and Zen Santa are pointing to. The real test of our inner growth does not take place on the meditation cushion, in prayer, in our metaphysical musings, vegan diet, or activism. It shows in our ability to be present in mind and open in heart to the impossible complexities of another human being. This silent and invisible gesture may just be what it takes for both the other person and ourselves to be “converted into Buddhas”.

May we return home with gift-bestowing hands,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

Be Here Now by Ram Dass

Ram Dass’s iconic work bridges mystical insight and human vulnerability, repeatedly circling back to the truth that spiritual realization must survive family dinners, grief, irritation, and love. Be Here Now explores how the deepest realizations are not meant to lift us out of life, but to return us to it, open-handed, open-hearted, and unmistakably human.

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“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone,” said the Sinless One and cast no stone (John 8:7).

What is a “good person”? It is an ideal, and like all ideals, it is a form of protection against reality. The degree to which I know myself as a “good person” is the degree to which I do not know myself as a person. And in the shadow cast by my ideal, its opposite grows and festers with all the violent energy of reality denied.

The ideal of the “good person” is conditional and exclusive. It circumscribes what portion of reality agrees with it and damns the rest to hell, fracturing life by casting stones of “right” and “wrong”. The ideal is the enemy of love—love being that which makes whole and includes, that to which conditions bend their knee. The ideal of the “good person” is born of fear, and like all progeny of fear, it breathes life into that which it opposes.

“I’d rather be whole than good,” said Jung, which is what one says when they drop their stone uncast. With the stone goes our protection, and the fear, now exposed, makes its plea: “But what about morality? What about justice? What’s there to live for if we drop the Good, the True, and the Beautiful?”

What’s left to live for is life itself, but this no ideal comprehends; ideals are all partial, while life is always whole.

May we line the Earth with stones uncast,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch invites us to drop the armor of moral identity and learn to look at the world with just, loving eyes. Here, goodness ceases to be a form of judging and becomes a way of seeing.

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Christ says, “strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Indeed, no seeker finds the way. The seeker follows winding paths to hidden places. The seeker thirsts for ornate gates, labyrinths, and secrets. The seeker seeks seeking, and what they seek, they find.

But straight is the gate and narrow is the way: too narrow for a thought to fit, too straight for wandering feet. Those who find it do so not by seeking far and wide but by arriving there from where every seeker first set out.

“The way, the truth, and the life” dwells on no horizon. It’s no esoteric ecstasy or world-transcending thought. It is not Allah, Buddha, Brahma, or the Christ. It is the smallest thing, smaller than a mustard seed, though pregnant with the world. It is that uncreated light that dwells in every child’s eyes.

May we see as children,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Suzuki teaches that the perfect way is not to chase perfection. When we stop trying to reach life, we find that we were never apart from it. His idea of “beginner’s mind” (open, humble, unknowing) is a manual for returning to the immediacy that precedes thought.

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A spark of awareness in the abyss, a momentary gasp and a sigh—this much is a human life. An infinite heart and an infinite mind caught in finite space and time: bound to a roaming thirst this finite world cannot sate.

Thus I toil at the forge where my shackles are wrought. Shackles called “finite” and “infinite” in a cage called “world”. Unbreakable, fashioned of the mind stuff thoughts and dreams are made of.

But that which I seek is that which I am; never lost, I cannot be found. This search does not end upon success, but succeeds when it ends.

When I see the emptiness of the world, I find my own fullness. When I find my fullness, the world sees itself, and I am that seeing. The mind’s forge grows cool, and there is freedom. Freedom that is not an escape but an arrival.

May we arrive where we are,

Simeon

Suggested Reading

The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

Merton’s autobiography begins as a restless search for meaning and ends in a discovery of the divine ground already present within. The Seven Storey Mountain is a confession, a surrender, and finally a homecoming

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In this piece, we explore how the strangeness of existence is not “out there,” but woven into the very awareness that asks the questions. When the search relaxes, a different kind of clarity emerges, one where the world and the one who sees it are no longer strangers.